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Bottom of the Pile: Jan. 7th, 2015

Still probably the safest team since they're working with the cartoon Spidey. Also, is that a Spider-Man version of Speed Buggy?

Ant-Man

Ant-Man #1 is a great comic, read on it's own. A down-on-his-luck superhero trying to get his life back on track, dealing with everything from job issues to divorce to finding time to spend with his daughter. That's why its getting all those 10/10s.

Continuity-wise, though...it actually irks the living hell out of me. If it were a small thing, I'd leave it but...it's not. Part of Marvel NOW's little mini-reboot was Matt Fraction's Fantastic Four/FF pairing. The FF was meant to both continue the Future Foundation and be a representation of the Fantastic Four while they did "the ultimate family road trip" or whatever the tagline was.

Scott Lang, or Ant-Man, was the Reed stand-in and the whole sixteen issue arc for him was about him overcoming the irresponsibility that lead to him being such a massive fuck-up. It culminated in the guy devising a genius plan that lead to him kicking the ass of Dr. Doom. Unless the whole series was some sort of mass fever dream narrated by Fraction and Allred, this whole angle doesn't really work. Like I said, this isn't small--it was meant to be a major turning point in the character....and now it's been magically undone, in a way that kind of reminds me that in comics very little actually ever changes before being reverted to a previous status quo.

Batman Eternal

Seemingly, one of Batman Eternal's major goals is turning Catwoman into the biggest bad-ass in Gotham that isn't wearing a Bat-symbol on her chest. And, with panels like this, it's working. She just made all of Batman's rogue gallery look like a bunch of psychopathic goobers too obsessed with Batman to actually go and make the money they claim they want.

Detective Comics

Much as I miss Francis Manapul & Brian Buccellato on Flash, it's nice to have a Gotham City that looks like a place people would actually want to live. Also, it's nice to have Batman using unique solutions to problems and not just chucking the Bat-Gundam at things.

Legendary Star Lord

Posted this because it was a really neat usage of Kitty Pryde's phasing powers.

Spider-Man 2099

This is what happens when your character is too big in real life. Of all people, how did the Punisher have a legacy that survived into 2099? The dude's like Phoenix Jones with a gun. Or is this just some astronomically impossible coincidence?

New 52: Futures End

I'm thinking in actuality, the artists just prefer drawing "Superman's" costume. To be fair, it is pretty cool.

Author's Note: Bottom of the Pile is a weekly column (or at
least, my attempt at said) in which I cover the comics that found their
way to the bottom of my reading stack, thus being the "best". Since
bog standard reviews
can be found literally anywhere, coverage here can range from
mini-reviews to
funny comments to commentary on a creator's run or comics as a whole,
depending on a wide range of factors including the comic itself, the
amount of time I have, and my general mood.

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